[...] Do individuals control history, or do history and fate control individuals? The prescience of genius is an argument in favor of fate, and an argument against free will; if events can be foreseen long before they occur, they must have been caused neither by individuals nor by circumstances, but by history and fate. It appears that Hitler was the cause of the Holocaust, and that the Depression was the cause of Hitler's rise to power. But if the Holocaust was foreseen a century before it occurred, then it can't be ascribed to particular individuals, or to particular circumstances. While Hitler was the proximate cause of the Holocaust, and while the Depression was the proximate cause of Hitler's rise to power, the root causes of these events lie far deeper than any particular individuals or particular circumstances.

[...] Do individuals control history, or do history and fate control individuals? The prescience of genius is an argument in favor of fate, and an argument against free will; if events can be foreseen long before they occur, they must have been caused neither by individuals nor by circumstances, but by history and fate. It appears that Hitler was the cause of the Holocaust, and that the Depression was the cause of Hitler's rise to power. But if the Holocaust was foreseen a century before it occurred, then it can't be ascribed to particular individuals, or to particular circumstances. While Hitler was the proximate cause of the Holocaust, and while the Depression was the proximate cause of Hitler's rise to power, the root causes of these events lie far deeper than any particular individuals or particular circumstances.

Like authenticity, the topic of fate recurs throughout NBK. "Do you believe in fate?" is one of the first questions that Mickey asks Mallory. During the conversation in the prison after Mickey has been apprehended for grand theft, he tells Mallory that nothing can stop fate. (Fate is defined as the inevitability of a course of events predetermined by God or other agency beyond human control. Fatalism is the acceptance of all events as inevitable.) He also describes himself to Wayne Gayle as "fate's messenger." Mickey is a fatalist, which is to say that he accepts all events as inevitable. As a result, he is unburdened by any sense of responsibility for his actions. Ironically, it is Mickey's rejection of the concept of free will that makes him so free to be authentic. In his world all events are determined by factors beyond his control, thus the concepts of good and evil or guilt and innocence, are artificial constructs. This theory was also that of Nietzsche, who rejected free will and joyfully embraced fatalism. Nietzsche writes:

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The fable of intelligible freedom: Now one finally discovers that this human nature, too, cannot be accountable, in as much as it is a necessary consequence and assembled from the elements and influences of things past and present: That is to say that man can be made accountable for nothing, not for his nature, nor for his motives, nor for his actions, nor for the effects he produces. One has thereby attained to the knowledge that the history of the moral sensations is the history of an error, the error of accountability which rests on the error of freedom of the will...The proposition is as clear as daylight, and yet here everyone prefers to retreat back into the shadows and untruth: from fear of the consequences.

Like Nietzsche's superman, Mickey embraces fatalism and places himself beyond the categories of good and evil. Unburdened by guilt and responsibility, he is free do whatever he wants. Needless to say, Mickey is an unsavory example of what denial of free will and personal responsibility might lead to. As Nietzsche points out, the arguments against free will are very convincing but one is loathe to accept them because of the possible consequences. For Nietzsche, human beings have not only an instinct to survive, they incessantly strive to amplify and intensify their life experience and constantly endeavor to express their own vitality and strength. [...]

In the capitalistic hierarchy of values, capital stands higher than labour, amassed things higher than the manifestations of life. Capital employs labour, and not labour capital. The person who owns capital commands the person who 'only' owns his life, human skill, vitality and creative productivity. 'Things' are higher than man. The conflict between capital and labour is much more than the conflict between two classes, more than their fight for a greater share of the social product. It is the conflict between two principles of value: that between the world of things, and their amassment, and the world of life and its productivity." Capitalism only values a person as representing a certain amount of the commodity called "labour power," in other words, as a THING. Instead of being valued as an individual -- a unique human being with intrinsic moral and spiritual worth -- only one's price tag counts. This debasement of the individual in the workplace, where so much time is spent, necessarily affects a person's self-image, which in turn carries over into the way he/she acts in other areas of life. If one is regarded as a commodity at work, one comes to regard oneself and others in that way also. Thus all social relationships -- and so, ultimately, ALL individuals -- are commodified. In capitalism, literally nothing is sacred -- "everything has its price" -- be it dignity, self-worth, pride, honour -- all become commodities up for grabs. Such debasement produces a number of social pathologies. "Consumerism" is one example which can be traced directly to the commodification of the individual under capitalism. To quote Fromm again,

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"THINGS have no self, and men who have become things [i.e. commodities on the labour market] can have no self"

However, people still feel the NEED for self-hood, and so try to fill the emptiness by consuming. The illusion of happiness, that one's life will be complete if one gets a new commodity, drives people to consume. Unfortunately, since commodities are yet more things, they provide no substitute for self-hood, and so the consuming must begin anew. This process is, of course, encouraged by the advertising industry, which tries to convince us to buy what we don't need because it will make us popular/happy/free/etc (delete as appropriate!). But consuming cannot really satisfy the needs that the commodities are bought to satisfy. Those needs can only be satisfied by social interaction based on truly human values and by creative, self-directed work. This does not mean, of course, that anarchists are against higher living standards or material goods. To the contrary, they recognise that liberty and a good life are only possible when one does not have to worry about having enough food, decent housing, and so forth. Freedom and 16 hrs of work a day do not go together, nor do equality and poverty or solidarity and hunger. However, anarchists consider consumerism to be a distortion of consumption caused by the alienating and inhuman "account book" ethics of capitalism, which crushes the individual and his or her sense of identity, dignity and selfhood.

Schopenhauer, who thought that character came from one's father and intellect came from one's mother, said that genius was the product of an exceptionally strong-willed father and an exceptionally intelligent mother.

A couple of interesting facts about Schopenhauer: Schopenhauer's father had strong feelings against any kind of nationalism and he selected the name "Arthur" for his son especially because it was the same in English, German, and French. As far as his mother is concerned, well, he never got along with her; when Goethe, who was a friend of hers, told her that he thought her son was destined for great things, she objected: she had never heard there could be two geniuses in a single family

A couple of interesting facts about Schopenhauer: Schopenhauer's father had strong feelings against any kind of nationalism and he selected the name "Arthur" for his son especially because it was the same in English, German, and French. As far as his mother is concerned, well, he never got along with her; when Goethe, who was a friend of hers, told her that he thought her son was destined for great things, she objected: she had never heard there could be two geniuses in a single family

An interesting point that Schopenhauer makes I think is that philosophy is the world itself. The force he calls "Wille zum Leben" or Will (literally will-to-life) is the forces driving man to remain alive and to reproduce, a drive intertwined with desire. This Will is the inner content and the driving force of the world. For Schopenhauer, Will had ontological primacy over the intellect; in other words, desire is understood to be prior to thought, and, in a parallel sense, Will is said to be prior to being. In attempting to solve or alleviate the fundamental problems of life, Schopenhauer was a rare philosopher who considered philosophy and logic less important (or less effective) than art, certain charitable practices ("loving kindness", in his terms), and certain forms of religious discipline. Schopenhauer concluded that discursive thought (such as philosophy and logic) could neither touch nor transcend the nature of desire — i.e., Will. He proposed that humans living in the realm of objects are living in the realm of desire, and thus are eternally tormented by that desire. The role of desire in Schopenhauer is similar to the role of Kāma, sensual gratification, which is treated as one of the goals of life relating to the second stage of life in the Hindu tradition.

These ideas have strong parallels to the notion of purushartha or goals of life in Vedanta Hindu/Buddhist thought, with Schopenhauer drewing attention to these similarities. His philosophy is similar to Buddhism in many ways. Buddhism teaches what it calls the Four Noble Truths:

1. There is suffering or dukkha; 2. Suffering results from desire; 3. Desires can be totally eliminated (the eventual state of Nirvana) 4. Following the Eightfold Path leads to Nirvana.

Schopenhauer's philosophy asserts the first three of Buddhism's four truths in that it associates will with desire, appetite, and craving. However, instead of the fourth truth, Schopenhauer describes a twofold path. Denial of the will is attained by either:

1. Personal experience of an extremely great suffering that leads to loss of the will to live; or 2. Knowledge of the essential nature of life in the world through observation of the suffering of other people.

Buddhist Nirvana is equivalent to the condition that Schopenhauer described as denial of the will. Occult historian Joscelyn Godwin has said that it was Buddhism that inspired the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, and, through him, attracted Richard Wagner. This Orientalism reflected the struggle of the German Romantics, in the words of Leon Poliakov, "to free themselves from Judeo-Christian fetters"

An interesting point that Schopenhauer makes I think is that philosophy is the world itself. [...] In attempting to solve or alleviate the fundamental problems of life, Schopenhauer was a rare philosopher who considered philosophy and logic less important (or less effective) than art, certain charitable practices ("loving kindness", in his terms), and certain forms of religious discipline. Schopenhauer concluded that discursive thought (such as philosophy and logic) could neither touch nor transcend the nature of desire — i.e., Will.

Because of this it has been argued that he did not have much philosophical thought in him; it would be wrong, though, to see his philosophy as something merely derived from other all philosophical discourse that preceded him (he studied in particular Plato and Kant). He was completely original. More or less the same charges against Nietzsche; much of Nietzsche's philosophy has a critical flavour to it, and much criticism of his work has arisen from the fact that "he does not have a system." However, Nietzsche himself expressed a general disdain for philosophy as the construction of systems — indeed, he says in the preface of "Beyond Good and Evil" that many systems built by dogmatist philosophers have relied more on popular prejudices (such as the idea of a soul) than anything else.

Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence, for instance, was addressed by Schopenhauer. It is a purely physical concept, involving no "reincarnation," but the return of beings in the same bodies. Time is viewed as being not linear but cyclical. By the way, Eternal Recurrence is a concept which posits that the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur in the exact same self-similar form an incomprehensible and unfathomable number of times. The concept has roots in ancient Egypt, and was subsequently taken up by the Pythagoreans and Stoics. With the decline of antiquity and the spread of Christianity, the concept fell into disuse, though Friedrich Nietzsche briefly resurrected it. The basic premise is that the universe is limited in extent and contains a finite amount of matter, while time is viewed as being infinite. The universe has no starting or ending state, while the matter comprising it is constantly changing its state. The number of possible changes is finite, and so sooner or later the same state will recur.

Physicists such as Stephen Hawking and J. Richard Gott have proposed models by which the (or a) universe could undergo time travel, provided the balance between mass and energy created the appropriate cosmological geometry. More philosophical concepts from physics, such as Hawking's "arrow of time," for example, discuss cosmology as proceeding up to a certain point, whereafter it undergoes a time reversal (which, as a consequence of T-symmetry, is thought to bring about a chaotic state due to thermodynamic entropy).

Nietzsche's concept of eternal recurrence, for instance, was addressed by Schopenhauer. It is a purely physical concept, involving no "reincarnation," but the return of beings in the same bodies. Time is viewed as being not linear but cyclical. By the way, Eternal Recurrence is a concept which posits that the universe has been recurring, and will continue to recur in the exact same self-similar form an incomprehensible and unfathomable number of times. The concept has roots in ancient Egypt, and was subsequently taken up by the Pythagoreans and Stoics. With the decline of antiquity and the spread of Christianity, the concept fell into disuse, though Friedrich Nietzsche briefly resurrected it. The basic premise is that the universe is limited in extent and contains a finite amount of matter, while time is viewed as being infinite. The universe has no starting or ending state, while the matter comprising it is constantly changing its state. The number of possible changes is finite, and so sooner or later the same state will recur.

The thought of eternal recurrence is central to the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. As Heidegger pointed out, Nietzsche never speaks about the reality of "eternal recurrence" itself, but about the "thought of eternal recurrence." Nietzsche conceived of the idea as a simple "hypothesis", which, like the idea of Hell in Christianity, did not need to be true in order to have real effects. The thought of eternal recurrence appears in a few parts of his works, in particular §125 and §341 of "The Gay Science" and then in "Thus Spoke Zarathustra." It is also noted for the first time in his posthumous fragment of 1881. In "Ecce Homo" (1888), he wrote that the thought of the Eternal Return was the "fundamental conception" of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Nietzsche's conception of the eternal recurrence of all things differs from other seemingly similar hypotheses, insofar as it is intrinsically related to Zarathustra's announcement of the Übermensch and the ethical imperative of overcoming nihilism. On a few occasions in his notebooks, Nietzsche discusses the possibility of eternal recurrence as cosmological truth, but in the works he prepared for publication it is treated as the ultimate method of affirmation. According to Nietzsche, it would require a sincere amor fati (Love of Fate) not simply to endure, but to wish for, the eternal recurrence of all events exactly as they occurred — all the pain and joy, the embarrassment and glory.

Nietzsche calls the idea "horrifying and paralyzing," and says that its burden is the "heaviest weight" ("das schwerste Gewicht") imaginable. The wish for the eternal return of all events would mark the ultimate affirmation of life:

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What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more' ... Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: 'You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.' [The Gay Science, §341]

As described by Nietzsche, the thought of eternal return is more than merely an intellectual concept or challenge; it is akin to a koan, or psychological device that occupies one's entire consciousness, stimulating a transformation of consciousness known as metanoia.

In Nietzsche scholarship, the cosmological hypothesis of eternal recurrence is of extreme interest, being a crucial axiom of his philosophy. In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, part III, chap. 2, #2, "Of the Vision and the Riddle," Nietzsche confronts his aforementioned inner demon and proves to him the reality of eternal recurrence, and this leads to a self-awakening in which the demon is exorcised. Nietzsche also described himself as "the bringer of eternal recurrence" in "Twilight of the Idols." Much effort is still expended in attempts to understand Nietzsche's notebooks' fragmentary mentions of eternal recurrence. In Carl Jung's seminar on "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" Jung claims that the dwarf states the idea of the Eternal Return before Zarathustra finishes his argument of the Eternal Return when the dwarf says, "'Everything straight lies,' murmured the dwarf disdainfully. 'All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle.'" The translation of Nietzsche's eternal return is from the German ewige Wiederkunft. The German word ewige also means perpetual. Though always translated as eternal it is worth noting this potential dual meaning.

Physicists such as Stephen Hawking and J. Richard Gott have proposed models by which the (or a) universe could undergo time travel, provided the balance between mass and energy created the appropriate cosmological geometry. More philosophical concepts from physics, such as Hawking's "arrow of time," for example, discuss cosmology as proceeding up to a certain point, whereafter it undergoes a time reversal (which, as a consequence of T-symmetry, is thought to bring about a chaotic state due to thermodynamic entropy).

The concept of cyclical patterns is very prominent in dharmic religions, including Hinduism and Buddhism among others. The Wheel of life represents an endless cycle of birth, life, and death from which one seeks liberation. In Tantric Buddhism, a wheel of time concept known as the Kalachakra expresses the idea of an endless cycle of existence and knowledge. Related to the concept of eternal return is the Poincaré recurrence theorem in mathematics (the latter says that a system having a finite amount of energy and confined to a finite spatial volume will, after a sufficiently long time, return to an arbitrarily small neighborhood of its initial state; the Poincaré recurrence time is the amount of time elapsed until the recurrence). It should be noted that "a sufficiently long time" could be much longer than the predicted lifetime of the universe.

However, Nietzsche scholar Walter Kaufmann has described a proof originally put forward by Georg Simmel, which refutes the claim that a finite number of states must repeat within an infinite amount of time:

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Even if there were exceedingly few things in a finite space in an infinite time, they would not have to repeat in the same configurations. Suppose there were three wheels of equal size, rotating on the same axis, one point marked on the circumference of each wheel, and these three points lined up in one straight line. If the second wheel rotated twice as fast as the first, and if the speed of the third wheel was 1/π of the speed of the first, the initial line-up would never recur.

It can be argued that this proof is flawed. Even if a system contains an infinite number of states as considered from the perspective of classical mechanics, applying quantum mechanics reveals that the system will repeat after an arbitrarily long time due to discretization.(Classical mechanics is only a rough approximation to the physics that goes on at the atomic scale). However, not all quantum-mechanical operators have discrete spectra.

"Behold this gateway, dwarf!" I continued. "It has two faces. Two paths meet here; no one has yet followed either to its end. This long lane stretches back for an eternity. And the long lane out there, that is another eternity. They contradict each other, these paths; they offend each other face to face; and it is here at this gateway that they come together. The name of the gateway is inscribed above: ‘Moment.’ But whoever would follow one of them on and on, farther and farther – do you believe, dwarf, that these paths contradict each other eternally?"

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"All that is straight lies," the dwarf murmured contemptuously. "All truth is crooked; time itself is a circle."

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"You spirit of gravity," I said angrily. "Do not make things too easy for yourself! Or I shall let you crouch where you are crouching, lame-foot; and it was I that carried you to this height.

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"Behold," I continued, "this moment! From this gateway, Moment, along, eternal lane leads backward: behind us lies an eternity. Must not whatever can walk have walked on this lane before? Must not whatever can happen have happened, have been done, have passed by before? And if everything has been there before – what do you think, dwarf, of this moment? Must not this gateway too have been there before? And are not all things knotted together so firmly that this moment draws after it all that is to come? Therefore – itself too? For whatever can walk – in this long lane out there too, it must walk once more.

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"And this slow spider, which crawls in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and I and you in the gateway, whispering together, whispering of eternal things – must not all of us have been there before? And return and walk in that outer lane, out there, before us, in this long dreadful lane – must we not eternally return?"

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"…O Zarathustra, who you are and must become" behold you are the teacher of the eternal recurrence – that is your destiny! That you as the first must teach this doctrine – how could this great destiny not be your greatest danger and sickness too?

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"Behold, we know what you teach: that all things recur eternally, and we ourselves too; and that we have already existed an eternal number of times, and all things with us. You teach that there is a great year of becoming, a monster of a great year; which must, like an hourglass, turn over again and again so that it may run down and run out again; and all these years are alike in what is greatest as in what is smallest; and we ourselves are alike in every great year, in what is greatest as in what is smallest.

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"Now I die and vanish… the soul is as immortal as the body. But the knot of causes in which I am entangled recurs and will create me again. I myself belong to the causes of eternal recurrence. I come again, with this sun, with this earth, with this eagle, with this serpent – not to a new life or a better life or a similar life: I come back eternally to this same, selfsame life, in what is greatest as in what is smallest, to teach again the eternal recurrence of all things..."

Though Nietzsche briefly touches on "eternal recurrence" a few more times in other works, the quotes given above are the most fundamental, and stand out like two supporting pillars of the doctrine. Right off the bat one can see from these quotes, "eternal recurrence" is a thread woven out of thin air, a simple fantasy presented without any argument. It is a tale, a story told as part of the narrative of that old oracle, Zarathustra, along with his eagle, serpent, spider and other animals. This narrative, which at its very best, is only a fabrication of the writer's imagination, does not amount to a reasoned argument in support of a theory or doctrine. In the narrative, "eternal recurrence" is just a hypothesis put forward by the author. None of the exhaustive arguments, axioms, theorems, syllogisms, etc., required to prove or support a "philosophical" theory, are ever given either here, or any other works of Nietzsche. Eternal Recurrence is just an idea, a concept, thrown at us much like a ghost story. There are those, who, like little children, believe any ghost story at face value. But there are also some of us who demand a more substantive and objective proof before we can accept an idea.

The strongest of the "pseudoscientific" arguments, put forward to support this doctrine by the followers of Neitzsche, is a mixture of statistical mathematics, physics and astrophysics. It goes something like this: -- "...Time is infinite, an endless eternity, but since space and matter in the universe are finite, limited, all the matter in the universe, therefore, can be combined, arranged and rearranged in a finite number of permutations. Given the eternity of time, these permutations must therefore, repeat themselves over and over again, and must already have repeated themselves many, many times in the eternal past. And they will also continue to repeat themselves going in circles in the eternity of the future." Bingo! Therefore, they say: eternal recurrence is a scientific fact!